


F-R-I-S-K

by ahbonjour



Series: the gaster stories [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Agender Frisk, Dissociation, Gen, Masks, Pain, Sign Language, chara is not a good, gaster is scary but also the best, soul tearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5246960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahbonjour/pseuds/ahbonjour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a voice pounding in Frisk's head that is not their own. Gaster can tell when there is evil.</p>
<p>(see end for W.D. translations)</p>
            </blockquote>





	F-R-I-S-K

Papyrus shut the door to his room with a soft click, worry tracking across his face. Frisk didn’t get up with him, despite his encouragements, preferring to stay rooted to the bed. Outside the snow was falling softly.

“so what’s up?” they heard Sans ask.

“THE HUMAN,” Papyrus said, and Frisk could practically see him rocking back on his feet with his gloved hands folded behind his back, “IS NOT WELL.”

“What do you mean, they’re not well?!” Undyne demanded, stamping her foot. Frisk cowered deeper beneath her covers.

“I CAN’T SAY WHAT’S WRONG, FOR CERTAIN,” Papyrus continued, his normally cheerful voice full of concern. “I THINK THEY MAY JUST BE TIRED!”

“They can’t _just_ be tired,” Mettaton drawled. Frisk felt their hands begin shaking even worse. “I could understand being tired after their… _ordeal_ … but they haven’t come out of your room for two days. They have a whole overworld to explore, but they choose to stay there? And they haven’t said a word!”

“T-they never said a word,” Alphys stammered. There was silence for a long moment. “Did no one—no one notice they d-don’t talk?!”

“I thought they were just quiet,” Toriel murmured. “Oh, my poor child.”

“Did you see the way they looked at us?” Asgore asked, and that voice more than any other made Frisk start to cry again, burrow further into this unfamiliar bed. “Like they were terrified.”

“How they looked at _you_ ,” Toriel hissed.

“Tori—”

“Do not dare to call me Tori! You have lost that privilege!”

“I did what I thought I had to do!”

“Listen, _Toriel_ ,” Undyne sneered, “you’d better—”

“U-Undyne—”

“PLEASE STOP ARGUING!” Papyrus shouted, and Frisk yelped and clapped their hands over their ears. They could still hear Papyrus through them. “YOU SEE?! YOU’RE UPSETTING THE HUMAN!”

Sans had started talking, but his voice was so low and soft that Frisk couldn’t hear him without uncovering their ears. “—right, maybe they’re bone tired. or sick or something”

“Sans, please.”

“let’s let ‘em go one more night. the surface isn’t going anywhere.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, then, “One more night.” Undyne’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Then I’m going in there to drag them out myself!”

“YOU’RE DOING NO SUCH THING!”

The voices continued arguing, getting softer and softer as they separated from each other, descended the stairs, went to wherever they were going. Frisk clutched their sweater over their chest, trying to slow their breathing and pounding heart. The bed below them was soft, the blanket Papyrus had provided was warm, but they refused to sleep. They hadn’t slept in three days. They had begun to pinch themselves to stay awake, and now their skin was covered in little red marks. Half of them believed that, truly, these monsters were their friends, the best friends they had in the world—the other half didn’t want to risk falling asleep and letting the monsters kill them while they were off-guard. 

Oh sure, the risk of their soul being taken was low now that the surface was open, but after being chased, hunted and hunter endlessly, the thought that these monsters wanted nothing but to harm them and they wanted to kill them back was a tough thing to shake, especially with a voice whispering in their ear reminding them to kill or be killed and a vague sense of when they'd believed that voice. They still clutched at the old, rusty dagger, so tight they had deep impressions on their palms. Papyrus had tried to take it from them, but they’d bit him when he did, and he’d left it alone after that.

Papyrus. The one person they let in here.

Everyone else had tried to come in, but whenever Frisk saw any of the monsters, they could only see them as wishing to do them harm, Toriel with hands full of flame, Alphys with a sick grin and a killer robot, Sans with an eye so blue it made them shake, even though they knew they’d never seen him do that before. Papyrus was the only exception because they knew he might hurt them, bruise them, make them bleed—but he’d never kill them. Yet.

The shadows around the room were thick that night, full of secrets and promises. Frisk blinked, hard, shook their head so fast they felt their brain rattle. They scrunched their eyes closed and fisted their hair at the scalp, pulling it so the pain would distract them.

‘ _There’s only one way this can go._ ’

Frisk tugged their hair in opposite directions, trying to get the voice to shut up, shut up!

‘ _They’re going to kill you_ ,’ the voice insisted, the voice that had grown louder every step of their journey, that they’d managed to suppress until they’d reached the end but that, with the barrier destroyed, had grown so much that their own thoughts were drowned in it. ‘ _They’re going to kill you_.’

Frisk released their hair to sign, ‘No, they’re not!’

‘ _Yes they are. When have they shown that they would do anything but kill you?_ ’

‘Lots of times! Alphys warned me about Asgore, Papyrus answered my phone calls—’

‘ _LIES!_ ’ the voice screeched, and Frisk cried out and buried their face in their hands again. ‘ _All lies to let your guard down. Why would anyone ever be nice to you?_ ’

The shadows on the ground had begun to burble. ‘Because they like me.’

‘ _No one likes you! Better to do them in before they can hurt someone else._ ’

‘I can’t!’

‘ _Because you’re weak!_ ’ The shadows began to rise, coalescing into something massive, so big it had to stoop lest it hit the ceiling.

‘No, I’m not!’

‘ _Yes you are, you idiot._ ’ White had begun to form out of the mass, two hands with holes punched through, disconnected from anything, a face like a mask of bone split in three and a perpetually grinning gash of a mouth. ‘ _Because you know what you should be doing in—_ ’

‘Stop it!’

‘ _IS YOURSELF!_ ’

a voice said, and Frisk gasped, pitching back. It was a voice but it wasn’t a voice, it wasn’t spoken aloud, it just _was_. Frisk looked up at the shadow’s mask and fell completely still, not even daring to blink. They hadn't seen it arrive. What was it? The shadow remained still. Frisk raised their hand and the shadow waved theirs, the mask splitting even more deeply, great globs of black spilling out of it and hissing when they hit the floor, smelling like burnt rubber and campfires. Frisk began to sob in earnest, pressing the knife to her chest like a teddy bear, whimpering as the mass managed to look concerned and uncomfortable. It descended to look at them with outstretched hands.

it said, and Frisk began to wail.

“HUMAN?!” Frisk jolted back, whimpering and burrowing under the covers. The darkness, too, plopped back into the ground like water in dark streaks. A shadow passed over the keyhole, a different one. “HUMAN, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? SHOULD I COME IN?” Frisk held their breath, unable to stop crying but hoping if they were silent he would leave. They remained like that for a moment, tense between them, until finally Papyrus sighed and said, “ALL RIGHT. PLEASE MAKE NOISE IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.” Frisk continued holding their breath until they heard his massive boots turn and tromp back down the stairs.

Finally, they released their breath and looked back at the ground, where the darkness was beginning to reform. The mask’s (was it a mask? It moved so realistically, if unsettlingly) eyelids contracted to look worried at the door, then it turned back to Frisk.

it said, it’s tone… conversational? Frisk said nothing, only held their knife up, waiting for it to descend on them, waiting for their soul to be ripped out and crushed again, again, again.

But instead, the creature leaned forward, peering at them, hands like bone folded in front of their mass. It tilted its head to one side, then another—and Frisk saw them. The tiniest points of light, like new stars, shining in their sockets like Sans’s eyes did. The pupils would have gone unnoticed in the horror show that was their body, but when Frisk saw them, they saw a spark of something intelligent, something horrible, something understanding.

And it hadn’t attacked them yet.

Frisk lowered the knife, very slightly, very slowly, keeping their grip.

The creature’s split mouth widened very slightly, and it rolled its hands over like an owl’s head for a moment before signing ‘Do you sign?’

Frisk’s eyes widened and they tossed the knife aside completely. ‘Yes!’ they signed frantically, crawling to the edge of the race car bed. ‘You sign!’

The creature smiled even further and dropped down to their eye level. ‘Yes. Sans does too. Papyrus does. A little.’

They watched the way the creature signed Sans, signed Papyrus, and copied their movements. ‘Why haven’t they signed to me?’

‘You didn’t say you needed it.’ The creature pressed its disconnected hands forward, prodding Frisk in the chest. Its touch felt like stardust. ‘You have something evil inside you.’

Frisk’s eyes welled with tears again. They were so tired. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘I know. You righted it. Are they talking to you?’

Frisk’s mouth twisted as they rattled their brains. ‘They’re quiet now.’

The creature seemed to smirk. ‘They’re afraid of me. Many people are. May I?’

Frisk shrunk back. ‘May you what?’

The creature’s hands swirled, opened small pockets of blue and orange in front of them that slid around each other like fish. Its eyes lit up in the same shades and Frisk was reminded of a nightmare. ‘I came to you because I want to take them with me. Out of time. Give you a chance.’

Frisk clutched their hands to their chest, where they knew their soul would be. Their eyes were transfixed on the way the colors lit up its face. ‘Why do you want to do that?’

‘I owe many people a lot of favors. I would like to start paying them back. May I?’

Frisk hesitated, then crawled back to the edge of the bed. The creature pressed the swirling colors together and Frisk, with trembling hands, asked, ‘Is this going to hurt?’

the creature said, before rearing back with an awful screech like grinding metal and plunging both hands into Frisk’s chest.

Frisk felt themselves screaming before they knew they were screaming, so white hot and searing was the pain they felt in their chest. They’d died a hundred times, felt the pain of thousands of cuts and burns, watched their soul shatter over and over like a roundelay but nothing compared to this. It felt like a white-hot poker being shoved into them and rooting around in their veins, black bubbling tar filling their lungs and choking their voice. Light spilled out of them in splatters, in rivers like blood. The creature above them was humming and vibrating as it worked, deft fingers prodding at their heart and spine. Someone else was screaming too, someone deep within Frisk’s mind. The pain felt like a thousand years but was really less than a second, and almost as soon as it had stuck its hands in, they were out, and…holding something.

A soul. Red. Like Frisk’s.

And all the screaming stopped.

Frisk inhaled sharply, clutched at their chest, but the soul the creature was holding wasn’t theirs. They could still feel their own, beating fast against the locket still hanging round their neck. Red though it may be, same shade, same sheen, Frisk’s soul glowed differently. This soul glowed with a light that was diseased, pulsating crimson, shimmering dark around the edges where it tried to encroach. Frisk leaned forward to get a better look but the creature pulled away, snapping its fingers and letting the heart disappear in a shower of dead pixels that reflected in Frisk’s eyes and off the creature’s mask.

It tipped forward again, dripping more of its mass on the floor. ‘How are you?’

Frisk raised their hands to respond but before they could Sans was kicking Papyrus’s door open, eye glowing a bright ugly yellow-blue, hand extended and blue magic grabbing the creature’s face, slamming it into the ground with one powerful swing of his stubby arm. The creature groaned and rolled like the swell of the sea and Sans’s eye dimmed, his perma-grin tipping into something that was almost horrified. “…gaster?”

the creature, whose name was apparently Gaster, groaned. It reached across the ground, towards Sans, but Sans made an involuntary noise of disgust and tripped backward over his slippers.

“geez, man, what happened to you?”

“yeah, i guess that would do this to someone.” The blue in Sans’s eye had faded, but when he looked up, back to Frisk, who sat looking with horror at Sans and Gaster, and it returned with full force. “what did you do to them?”

The magic grabbed Gaster and flung him against the wall. “ **w h a t  d i d  y o u  d o ?** ”

Frisk waved their hands wildly, finally drawing his attention with his name, ‘SANS’, signed the same way Gaster had signed it, the word for ‘joke’ with the top hand curled into an S. Abruptly, the blue fled his eye, drained like water, mimicking the movements of Gaster's draining body sliding to the ground. Sans stepped forward, as far as he dared.

‘you deaf?’

‘I’m mute.’

Sans flinched back and slapped a hand to his forehead. “i am the dumbest skeleton on the planet.” ‘but you sign?’

‘I can hear you too. I can’t talk. Sans—’

“oh geez, kid,” Sans said, shifting his weight, clearly fighting the urge to begin pacing back and forth. “i didn’t know, i’m sorry. what a kucklehead i am, huh?”

“gaster!” Sans cried, going to the shadows and helping them up as best as you can help shadows up. “i’m sorry, i thought you’d… done something. bad. like before.”

Gaster looked back up at the two of them and Frisk saw it, a shard of the soul he’d drawn out of Frisk, slipping through the cracks on his face and leaving smoke where it trailed. Gaster's face was beginning to melt through the holes in his mask and Frisk watched with morbid fascination, and when they looked at Sans, they saw him watching too.

‘I’ve stopped doing that,’ Gaster signed, his hands having regained their mass. He swatted at the soul. ‘I owe a lot of people a lot of favors. You and Paps—’

“please don’t,” Sans said quietly, his smile slipping. He glanced back over to Frisk. “what do we do now?”

he said, deep rumble that shook the house and made Frisk and Sans both quake and push away. The soul piece had grown stronger now, a second piece had flown into it and affixed itself like soldiered metal. Gaster looked to Frisk and signed ‘get out of here’, his mask cracking around the edges with the consternation it took to impart how important it was for them to leave. The red glow was back and it roiled Frisk’s stomach. ‘They want you back…they will stop at nothing. They are fighting me. I can hold them off, but….’

‘don’t gotta tell us twice,’ Sans signed, chancing a headlong glance and smile at Frisk. He held one hand out. ‘you okay?’

Frisk nodded and leapt out of the bed, leaving the knife where it lay in favor of grabbing Sans’s hand. Frisk’s lip had begun trembling again. ‘I couldn’t say anything,’ they signed, and Sans picked them up and steadied them on his surprisingly soft hip so they could use both hands. ‘I wanted to, but there was another person, they lived in me—’

“mm-hm,” Sans hummed, tossing a backpack on the bed and starting to stuff Frisk’s things into it, their tutu, their empty gun. Some of his own textbooks.

‘They wanted me to kill you.’

“they got you to, didn’t they?” Sans asked, his eye glowing the faintest blue. Frisk flinched and buried their face in the fur of his hood. “kid.”

‘I fixed it.’

Sans sighed. “i know you did.”

“i know you don’t need material possessions, but for the rest of us, they can be important,” Sans snapped, zipping up the bag and slinging it across the shoulder Frisk wasn’t resting on. “ey. kid. look at me.” Frisk chanced looking up at him. ‘you and me, we’re gonna have a long talk once we get to the surface. but for right now, go wake up papyrus. we’re heading out.’ He set them down and nudged them towards the door, but Frisk didn’t move. They were staring at Gaster. “go on, kid.”

‘Will you be okay?’

The soul pieces had coalesced even further under Gaster’s face, but he still managed to smile. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he lied, the sick red glow around him beginning to pulse. Frisk could hear a distant laugh. ‘Take care of the boys, please.’

“ _go_ ,” Sans said, his voice hard as he practically shoved Frisk towards the door.

Frisk tripped their way out of it, and as soon as they crossed the threshold to the hallway it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the place and it was quiet. They looked back—Sans was yelling something at Gaster, but they could only see his mouth moving, not hear his words. It explained why no one had woken up to their screaming.

Papyrus was sleeping curled up on the couch below, with Undyne and Alphys nearby in sleeping bags. Mettaton was plugged into the wall outlet. The king and queen, however—

“My child?”

Frisk yelped and spun around, hands up in defensive reflex. Toriel stood a safe distance away, one of her paws gripping the front of her purple tunic, her eyes sorrowful and concerned. Seeing her here, now, with no fireballs and only her own twitching ears and soft fur…it made Frisk want to touch her. They faltered, more tears coming unbidden.

“Oh, child,” Toriel said, and Frisk could hear how her voice shook. “I…I don’t…”

It made Frisk want to hug her.

Frisk opened their arms and before they could make any kind of a noise Toriel was there, sweeping them off the ground and cradling them close to her chest. She smelled like cinnamon and golden flowers and _home_ and Frisk began a deep keening wail as they clutched her, trying to say how sorry they were, how much they’d wanted her to love them and how many mistakes they’d made, how all her unhappiness was their fault, all their fault….

“HUMAN?” Papyrus asked from the stairs, the closest his voice could come to soft, which was still quite loud. Frisk leaned back and looked at him—he looked rumpled from sleep. “YOU HAVE COME OUT OF MY ROOM. AND YOU ARE YELLING.”

‘F-R-I-S-K,’ Frisk fingerspelled, chancing a small smile. ‘That’s my name.’

Papyrus mouthed each letter as they spelled them, his eyes lighting up as he did. “FRISK!” he finally yelled; Frisk giggled as they watched Alphys and Undyne jerk out of sleep at the shouted word. Asgore poked his head in from the kitchen. “YOUR NAME IS FRISK! AND YOU SIGN! YOU KNOW I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, SIGN A LITTLE, TOO!” He fingerspelled his own name, then signed his name the way Gaster had, a quick flit from P to A and back. “IS THIS WHY YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TALKING?” Frisk nodded. “ARE YOU DEAF?” They shook their head. “BUT YOU’RE MUTE?” A nod. “WOWIE! I WISH I’D KNOWN! I WOULD HAVE STARTED TO LEARN HOW TO SIGN MUCH MORE MUCH SOONER! NOW…” He’d reached the top of the stairs and posed thoughtfully with his hand on his chin. “HOW DO YOU SIGN SPAGHETTI?”

The door to Papyrus’s room slammed closed and Sans leaned back on it with both hands—it would have looked casual if not for the beads of sweat on his head, the way his eyes darted, the glow seeping out from under the door. “we need to get frisk out of here.”

“BROTHER? WHAT’S GOING ON?”

“i can explain in a little while,” Sans continued, giving the door one more kick to make sure it was closed (was it Frisk’s imagination, or did it kick back?) before stepping over to Toriel and hanging the backpack on her other shoulder, “but for right now, we gotta get frisk up to the surface. tori and undyne—” Frisk shook their head violently at the name. “—okay, tori and paps, i need you to take them up there. take a tent from the shed. frisk.” Frisk looked over at him, and his face was unreadable. “i need you to promise me no more resets. not ever. okay?”

Frisk tightened their grip on Toriel and nodded without hesitation. They lifted their hands to reply, to tell him he wouldn’t have to worry, but suddenly the light under the door pulsed with renewed vigor and the red shot into Frisk’s forehead, there was a loud pop, someone screamed, and like a lightbulb flicking off it was dark.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> TRANSLATIONS:  
> "Excuse me, can I help?"  
> "Please don't cry. I never know what to do when children cry."  
> "How do you like Papyrus?"  
> "Oh my, yes."  
> "I was trying to help."  
> "I’ve been trapped in the in-between moments."  
> "SANS"  
> "My head…"  
> "GET OUT OF HERE."  
> "You really need to get out of here soon."  
> "Frisk? FRISK!"


End file.
